Keep pushing on transportation plan

Published 12:00 am, Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Just hours into his second term, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy last January declared that Connecticut’s path to long-term prosperity is one that will be marked by improving the state’s transportation systems and infrastructure.

We agreed with him then and do now.

The governor’s plan to improve the state’s infrastructure is a sweeping one. It encompasses the state’s harbors, rail line with its hundred-year-old bridges, aging signal systems, tracks and catenary system, and clogged highways.

(Earlier this month, former New York Yankee Great Paul O’Neill traveled on I-95 to Bridgeport for a one-night-stand as manager of the city’s Bluefish baseball team. He was an hour and fifteen minutes late to the stadium and described the lurching bumper-to-bumper ride from New York as traveling “by stagecoach.”)

This is a path that will require thousands of small steps, $100 billion, and, by the governor’s own reckoning, some 30 years. In the state’s recently adopted budget, there’s an allotment of $190 million for rail over the next year. The bulk of the money, though, is going toward a new commuter line from New Haven to Springfield, Mass.

Another requirement for Connecticut’s future is a will and determination that has to outlive the tenure of this governor and the state’s current leadership.

The other day, the state took another step on the path, with the final purchase of new so-called M8 rail cars for the Metro-North rail line, a $1.2 billion investment that dates back to 2006, during the administration of former Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a Republican, and the start to buying 405 of the Kawasaki-made cars.

We’ll reiterate that smooth transportation is essential to the state’s economic well being. Clogged highways and a train system with a reputation for discomfort and a developing one for danger, are not attractions to a corporate CEO who’s thinking of moving into or expanding in Fairfield County.

And it stands to reason that the more people who find train travel pleasing, from both convenience and economic perspectives, the fewer cars will be ascending the entrance ramps on I-95, the Merritt Parkway and I-84. To that end, the governor is backing new Metro-North stations in Bridgeport and Orange.

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Another offshoot of improved rail service is the prospect of making the cities that host the stations more livable. Transit-oriented development — building near transportation hubs — is the way of the future. The new wave of city residents are less likely than were their parents or grandparents to want the expense and inconvenience of maintaining and parking a car, if they are in reasonable walking distance of reliable, safe public transportation.

The governor’s plan, as mentioned above, is an expensive one. It’s still not entirely clear where the money is coming from. That’s for our elected representatives to sort out. Where there is the will for bold action that will improve the state, they will find the money. The state needs to keep pressing ahead on improving transportation options, one step at a time.